Wednesday 18 April 2012 02.46 EDT
First published on Wednesday 18 April 2012 02.46 EDT

Ashley Highfield is set to raise the price of many of Johnston Press's 170 regional and local newspapers and create a series of themed digital destinations that aim to mirror the success of Mumsnet.

Highfield, the chief executive of the UK's second largest regional newspaper publisher, also plans new daily iPad apps for all the company's bigger titles, revamped websites with greater use of social media, and new mobile sites for all paid-for papers.

He admitted that print was becoming a smaller part of the mix and that by 2020 he expected to earn equal amounts from digital and print products, stressing the importance of mobile for reaching younger people.

Highfield laid down his strategic vision for Johnston Press to prove that local media is not dead in an internal video message to staff, the transcript of which has been seen by MediaGuardian.

He said that over the next year, all 170 paid-for Johnston Press titles would be relaunched and to expect often significant price increases along with redesigns. More of the company's 19 daily papers are expected to switch to weekly publication when they relaunch.

"Have you ever wondered why we charge 65p for a paper in one part of the country and £1 for a similar product elsewhere," he told staff in the video. "There are many cases like this where we simply under-charge."

"And it's not as if consumers won't pay," he added, saying that Johnston Press needed to make sure it was not leaving money on the table. "Our experience is that price increases generally do not have an adverse impact on circulation – consumers will pay, often up to 95p for a local, well-produced weekly product."

Highfield also said that a key tenet of his new platform neutral publishing strategy – which he summed up as local, social and mobile – was to launch a series of new "vertical content" businesses that would bring together output from all of Johnston Press's titles into one digital home.

He said the idea was that all of the material on similar topics – such as football, events, small business news and gardening – would be aggregated and enhanced with social media and e-commerce to create a compelling destination for people interested in that particular niche.

"Websites like Mumsnet have exploited this brilliantly and we can too," Highfield said. "So our plan is to create several of these new businesses and then promote them on a national basis."

He said that his 18 month plan was for local titles to digitally tap into their roots as an action-based medium, which people want to use to get things done like finding a service or book something.

"We want to be the natural home for local social media communities and the best guide to everything that's happening locally," he said. "All that extra traffic and audience knowledge will allow us to charge more for our advertising."

Highfield said that over the next three years he wanted to see double the average amount earned for every digital user, the holy grail not yet achieved by any regional publisher of stabilising print revenues and to increase aggregate audience across digital and print platforms.

"We will make much more money through a combination of delivering more of our media digitally and a vastly increased audience that we can target more effectively," Highfield said. "The result is that we will be a much more profitable business – perhaps not as large as Johnston Press in the past, but certainly a sustainable business performing a unique function in the economy and society, and delivering positive returns for our shareholders."

Part of the new-look Johnston Press will see all sales executives get new iPads, software and smartphones.

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